Ask a Lawyer

By: Steven M. Williams

Our rent management system uses an electronic lease. We input the appropriate information for a tenant into the system, and the tenant signs electronically. I am concerned about this because the Manufactured Home Community Rights Act (MHCRA) requires that I have a “written” lease with all of my tenants. Am I able to use the electronic lease from the management system, or should I keep using paper leases?

The short answer is that an electronic lease is probably ok with certain conditions. The Pennsylvania Electronic Transactions Act (the ETA) expressly provides that electronic agreements are legal for all purposes (with a few inapplicable exceptions). Thus, the MHCRA requirement for a written lease is likely satisfied with an electronic lease. However, two requirements must be met. First, for the electronic lease to be legally enforceable, you must give your tenants access to it. This can be accomplished by printing the electronic leases and giving them to your tenants, emailing the electronic leases to your tenants, or otherwise ensuring that your tenants have “present and future” access to the electronic leases through your management system. I recommend printing or emailing the electronic leases to your tenants rather than allowing your tenants access to your system. If you only keep the leases on your system and there is an issue that prevents access, your tenants could argue that the electronic leases are not enforceable and, thus, do not meet the written-lease requirement of the MHCRA.

Second, the ETA requires your tenants to consent to entering into electronic leases. Without consent from your tenants, the electronic leases are not enforceable. Tenants’ consent is not inferred simply because they have signed the electronic leases. Also, the consent cannot be contained in the leases. Rather, the consent must be obtained in a separate document signed (electronically or otherwise) by your tenants. I suspect your management system has a separate consent acknowledgment, but I would not assume this. You should confirm that it does; if not, you can use a written consent form.

I received a call this week from a nursing home stating one of my residents was admitted and is now a “ward of the state.” I was told that the nursing home has no intention of paying rent and that I have to treat the resident “as if she were dead.” The rent has not been paid for three months, and there are no living family members I can contact. What can I do in this situation?

Being a ward of the state is not like being dead. The tenant is still responsible for her lease obligations, and you still have all rights and remedies against her as if she were still living in the community. If the rent is unpaid, you can proceed with an eviction against the tenant, as you would in any other case. The eviction complaint should name the defendant, “Mary Smith, c/o {name of the facility},” and you should provide the address of the facility for service of the complaint.

With any luck, however, you may be able to avoid the eviction process. If the tenant is truly a ward of the state, the court will appoint a guardian with the legal authority to act on behalf of the tenant. You should contact the tenant’s guardian and ask if they will sign a document agreeing to terminate the lease and a notice of voluntary abandonment of the home. If they sign, you can avoid the eviction process and move forward with the abandonment process. If they don’t sign those documents, you must proceed with an eviction case.

Note also that when a guardian is appointed for a tenant, the family members, if any, have no authority to act on that person’s behalf. Instead, the guardian “calls all of the shots,” just as an executor would if a tenant dies.

I have a resident who has four dogs in her home. We have a no-pet policy, but last year, the resident requested permission to have a dog as an emotional support animal (ESA). Because she had all of the paperwork in order, I approved it. But now, she claims that the three new dogs are also ESAs. I believe this resident is taking advantage of the exception we granted, and I want to tell her to get rid of the three new dogs. Can I do this?

The prior ESA approval does not allow your resident to bring additional dogs into her home. Rather, each dog must independently qualify as an ESA. That is, each dog must provide the resident with an accommodation for her disability. You are entitled to know and have documentation from a qualified verifier that each dog does something different. If the resident cannot provide this verification, you can require that she remove the new dogs.

I have a resident who continues to bounce rent checks. Ultimately, he pays the rent and the NSF charges that are in my lease and fee disclosure, too. My local MDJ will not evict based on bounced checks so long as the resident pays what is owed. I am tired of dealing with this resident’s repeated bounced checks. Any advice?

In some circumstances, writing a bad check can be a crime. You can talk with your local police and ask if they will file a criminal complaint against the resident. If the police will not do this, there is a process under the court rules that allows you to file a private criminal complaint against a resident. In either case, I suspect that a threat by you to proceed with criminal charges may cause your resident to change his behavior to avoid a criminal conviction.